Extreme personalisation and artificial intelligence in the world of video

Recently there has been a lot of talk about personalization in the world of video. One of the questions that my colleagues and I have been asking ourselves is:

How long do we have before the events in the movie Minority Report come close to becoming a reality?

In Minority Report Tom Cruise goes into a shop and TV screens target him with advertisements addressing him in the first person after he is identified via iris recognition.

In the age we live, technology isn’t far off from this fictionalized situation, and if we think about it, practically all of the technological ingredients that are needed to recreate the conditions described in the movie are within our reach.

Frequently, innovation leads to technological advances that in theory could enable the realization of countless novel offerings that would be of interest to consumers, but companies are simply unable to keep up with the furious pace of technology, especially given the pressure to amortize the significant investments they need to make to implement and mass produce such advances.

Electric cars provide a clear example: although the technology has been available for some time, there hasn’t been a widespread roll-out into the market, a fact that owes much more to commercial factors and opposing interests than with the technology itself.

It’s possible that we’re facing a similar situation in the video and television industry. There are significant commercial interests that advocate the traditional linear broadcasting format or outdated advertising models, industry approaches that in the past have provided many benefits to a profitable sector. It seems as if there is an attempt to halt innovative techniques such as new advertising approaches or rights to viewing windows.

Nonetheless, the world of online multimedia and artificial intelligence applied to video is here to stay. Technologies and systems used by the industry to bring movies and TV series to millions of users via their connected devices provide countless opportunities that are not being developed and launched at the rate they should be, sometimes because the of decision-makers are afraid of getting it wrong and other times because there is a preference to wait for other players to act first.

At Jump we’re betting on a video industry without technological barriers, and we intend to be the driving force behind all those technologies related to Big Data, technologies that will provide a long-lasting competitive advantage to our customers.

As is always the case, we have encountered all manner of companies and industry players: those who are proactive and open to evolutionary change as well as those who are more tied to their current systems and are only willing to innovate when someone else has proven the way.

Do we really think that in the video industry we can wait for someone else to succeed with innovative technologies before we put them to use?

The recent examples of Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify are clear cases of companies that have innovated and succeeded, even in the multimedia industry, which has opposed change. They have ended up transforming business paradigms. Today most companies in the sector are trying to follow in their footsteps, but in most cases these followers trail behind the industry leaders without ever getting close to their advanced level of technology.

For some time now, industry leaders have been using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in order to personalize content and the user experience. Even so, they are far from the scenario referenced in Minority Report in which the application addresses the user in the first person and offers every single customer an individually tailored user experience with customized recommendations and even first-rate music and video playlists. Day by day while the consumer is using the service, both personalization and recommendations improve exponentially as the application or service learns the user’s habits and usage patterns.

At jump we are moving in this direction, but there is still much more to do. We’re beginning to glimpse the advent of extreme personalization, when targeted advertisements will truly capture the attention of the user and will only offer products that interest them, adapted to their specific situation or location. Video services will even be able to detect each user’s tolerance level for advertising and will be able to adjust the amount of publicity delivered according to each user’s preferences, specific state of mind, and/or situation. Ultimately the entertainment experience will be personal and entirely exclusive, just like a passport. Devices used for viewing content will almost be able to read minds and will adapt themselves to the changing circumstances of each moment.